


Eight Minutes in (Seventh) Heaven

by Tobiroth



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: M/M, Speed Dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 13:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3572093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobiroth/pseuds/Tobiroth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angeal's friends force him, after a series of bad dates and unluckiness in the romantic world in general, to give speed dating a try.  From kzam's prompt: 'speed dating. Because why not. Maybe one of them could be the event host or something instead of a speed-dater.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Minutes in (Seventh) Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kzam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kzam/gifts).



> originally posted on tumblr. Thanks for reading.

Angeal stood on a dirty curb, waved a hand goodbye as his friends pulled away in their car, and felt very much like a small child getting dropped off for school.   _See you at ten,_ Genesis had told him,  _and no earlier._  

There were a few other establishments on this block, a flashy tattoo parlor, a restaurant or two, and a convenience store at the intersection.  He was under strict orders to  _not_ wander into any buildings he wasn’t supposed to, however, so with a resigned sigh he turned away from the street.  Tonight’s destination was quite the opposite of an elementary school;  _Seventh Heaven_ was a popular bar in his Sector that friends often recommended but where he’d never been.  They had a special event tonight and Genesis, Sephiroth, and Zack had paid the participation costs for him.  There was little he could do.  

He ducked inside nervously, hands in his pockets to stop himself from awkwardly fiddling with them. It looked a lot like many other bars in Midgar—cramped, because space was costly, but clean.  To his right was the long bar counter itself with stools, and to his left were small tables.  It was longer than it was wide, and in the back of the establishment, in a bigger area, it looked like an employee was rearranging tables. Probably for the event.

The thing didn’t start until eight, and it was just before seven o’clock.  Three hours until his friends came to pick him up, Angeal noted with a frown—hopefully he’d be good and drunk by then.

He sat at the counter and jiggled his knee nervously as he waited for the bartender to come near. He tried to watch what the blond man was doing with the tables—lifting them up over his head and arranging them a few feet apart, in rows.  It looked intimidating.  

“Are you here for the speed dating?”

He turned, rather spooked, to the bartender, who was watching him with a kind smile on her face.  “Uh, yeah,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Is it obvious?”

“You look anxious. Don’t sweat it—these are always really fun.  You want a drink?”  

“Definitely,” he muttered, getting a laugh.  He ordered his usual and felt better with it in his hand.  He remembered the rules of the night from the email he’d gotten, but had no plans of following the  _don’t get drunk_ one.  His friends were so desperate to get him to this event that they’d even given him a wad of cash to spend at the bar.  He was still annoyed at the whole thing, but admittedly this helped him agree to showing up.

There were a few others at the bar, sitting quietly and drinking like him, and some groups at the tables.  It was hard to guess who was here for speed dating or not.  He glanced at the older man sitting just a few feet away—what if they got matched together later?  What the hell would he talk about with a man old enough to be his dad?

Angeal calmed after remembering that the night had an age requirement and a cap, and that the one for 35+ individuals was the next night.  A small relief.  He sipped at his whiskey and coke, looking down at his jeans.  Genesis had dressed him, saying that while he was absolutely positive that conversation would come easily to him and that every person he talked to would be helpless against his irresistible charms, a little extra help didn’t hurt.   _Help_ was a pair of Genesis’s own jeans that made his dick hurt if he sat the wrong way and one of Sephiroth’s shirts.  He only seemed to own black sweaters or black v-necks.  _No plaid,_ Genesis instructed.   _Leave the inner lumberjack for the second date._

His friends meant well but all the corrections made him shift uncomfortably, and maybe even feel a little hurt.  They didn’t think that his authentic self was his best self?  

He was being dramatic and he knew it, out of place and slightly afraid to be going through with this at all.  All the old insecurities came up at once, and he pushed them down as he took another long sip of his drink.  He glanced up as pale arms folded onto the counter from the other side.  

“You here for the speed dating?”

Nodding his head at the kind brunette at the other end of the bar Angeal answered, “She asked me the same thing ten minutes ago.  Am I that obvious?”  

The blond man shrugged, but he was smiling.  “Kind of, but it’s fine.  Everyone is nervous at first, but it’ll go away.  Finish that.”  

“Will do.”

The man moved to the side to get someone else a drink.  He pressed the right button on the soda dispenser as he poured the liquor with his other hand and filled it up without even looking at it to know when to stop, adding a quick lime on the side.  Angeal caught his eye when he was done and he came back over, glancing quickly over the bar to ensure he wasn’t needed elsewhere.  

“You’re here really early.”

“I know.  It’s kind of a long story.”  He scratched his cheek, but the bartender just tilted his head curiously, and he elaborated.  “Um, my friends dropped me off on their way downtown to see a play. They paid for me to do this, so I don’t have much of a say.”

“So you’re one of those,” the man commented, grinning.  “Forced into it.”

“Not  _forced_ ,” Angeal said feebly, “But… I wouldn’t have done this on my own.  No offense.”

“None taken. Hopefully you’ll enjoy yourself tonight.”

He moved to the other bartender, placing a friendly hand on her arm.  “Are you good over here?  I’m going to wipe down the other tables and finish setting up.”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

The man grabbed and dampened a dish towel, and a bottle of cleaner from somewhere under the counter.

“Would you want any help?” Angeal asked.

The man glanced up, frowning for just a moment before it eased off into a polite smile.  “It’s fine, but thanks.”

“Are you sure?” Angeal’s knee bounced more violently. “I wouldn’t mind.  And truthfully, I think I need to… do something.”

Whether it was pity or because he couldn’t be bothered to argue (or maybe he was actually glad for the offer of assistance), he nodded and handed Angeal the dish towel.  He grabbed another and came through the counter, lifting up a section of it to Angeal’s right and replacing it afterward.

Angeal drained the rest of his drink and nudged it toward the brunette to make it easier for her to clean up, then followed the man to the back section of the bar.  It was blocked off with wet floor signs that they squeezed past.  

“Just make sure there’s no crud or anything on them,” the bartender said, and began to spray all of the tiny tables with the pink fluid in the spray bottle.

It was mindless physical work that distracted him, and he was grateful.  There were quite a lot of tables though, somewhere around twenty in two rows of ten-ish, with two chairs on either side of them.  He pulled a hair tie out of his back pocket and put his hair up in a quick, short ponytail so he could bend over the tables and clean them off without having to push it out of his face every three seconds.

“Why are you so nervous?”

“I don’t know,” Angeal answered honestly.  “I shouldn’t be.  It’s just new.”

“It doesn’t seem like you have too much trouble talking to people.  We’ve had some really awkward people here before.  You’ll be fine.”

The man’s bluntness threw Angeal for a loop, but he could appreciate it.  “Thanks.  I read what to expect on your website when I signed up, but everything I’ve ever seen about speed dating makes it look…”

“Ridiculous?”

“Er, yeah.”

“Ha, I know.  To be honest, I had the same idea too before I actually hosted one for Tifa here.  It’s pretty different from how it’s portrayed in movies.”

“Really?”  Angeal glanced up from his table; the blond man was scraping at something microscopic on one of the tables with his thumbnail. “I figured you were the host.”

“Oh, yeah.  I’m directing the thing.”  When satisfied that he’d gotten whatever it was off he finished wiping down his table and came close to Angeal.  He covered the side of his mouth with his hand like he had a secret the rest of the bar couldn’t hear.  “We only decided to do this to get the bar more money at first.  It’s been surprisingly fun though.”  

“Do you two own this place?”

“Nah, just Teef.  I just work here.”  He shrugged, and jabbed a finger at the ceiling.  “Slash have a room to myself up there, and have to earn my right to stay.  I share the place with her and her family.”

“Oh.  That’s nice.  Lots to do in this neighborhood.”

“It’s okay.  Not often you get to live as an adult with your best kid friend.”  He stretched, then drifted back to his tables.  “Though I’m lookin’ to get out of here eventually.  Get a place of my own, all that shit.”  

They finished up and Angeal nudged all the chairs neatly into place.  It looked good—ready for whatever was going to happen.  

“Thanks for letting me help out.”  

“No, thank you, seriously.  I’m not gonna pay you for it though.”

“No, that’s not why I—”

“I’m joking. C’mere.”

On a small plastic fold-out table pushed against the wall were some cardboard boxes.  They were full of supplies for the night, Angeal discovered, as the man began pulling things out of them.  

“What’s your name?”

“Angeal Hewley.”

It turned out that he had a nametag with his first name printed on it already, and an ID number beneath it.  The man let him hold it as he began arranging everything else on the table.  

“Yeah, so everyone has an ID tag.  Me too.” He clipped one to the breast pocket of his shirt.  It just read  _Cloud_ and had no number. “This is the same number as your login for the dating company we source from, if you remember.”

“Oh, that’s right. So after the night’s over we log back in and see how many matches we have?”

“Yeah.  I’ll be entering those into the computer after the night’s over.”  

Cloud ran the basics by him, and although Angeal could tell he was doing it to get him to calm down he couldn’t feel too embarrassed by it.  The man was stupid levels of cute and listening to him talk in his gentle accent beat sitting by himself in agony by a landslide.

“What’s your ID number again?  You have a sheet in here somewhere.”

Angeal flashed his badge and Cloud sifted through a stack of papers.  “Is that pronounced  _ahn_ or  _ann_?”

“The second one.   _Angeal_. Though I wouldn’t mind if you said the first.  It happens occasionally.  Cloud is a unique name.”

“It sounds like I’d be the kind of shithead to run a goddamn speed dating night at a queer bar,” Cloud said, his voice sour, but a smile on his face nonetheless.  He pulled out a paper and let Angeal glance over it. “You remember the survey they had you fill out online?”

“Hoo boy. Yeah.”  

That survey had been one of the toughest things Angeal had done in a while.  It asked him questions about his hobbies, which were easy enough as long as he tried to not sound like some self-obsessed asshole. Ones about his best qualities and the things that made him attractive to others were a lot harder.

It wasn’t quite that Angeal doubted his own ability to get dates or hold them.  He knew objectively that he was an attractive man and had the capacity to be a good boyfriend.  Sephiroth and Genesis were the closest friends he’d ever had, however, and having them by his side for almost a decade now occasionally made him…not upset, and not quite self-conscious, but something.  They were far flashier and eyes tended to turn to them, and not him, when they were out together.  His own charms were there, but took a little bit of digging or observation.

Seph and Gen had been together for almost three years now, and Zack had just passed his one year anniversary with his girlfriend, Aerith.  Angeal hadn’t had a relationship that lasted more than two months for years and years, and a recent string of bad dates that made even he, with such a kind and understanding heart, drop passive-aggressive, self-pitying statements in the company of his friends and their disgusting happiness.  To their credit their only response was to bully him—sometimes physically—into more dates, no matter how many times he came back saying it was a flop.  

 _I think he should try a new approach,_ Zack had suggested a few weeks previous, so here he was—goddamn speed dating.  What a joke.  

“They matched all of you up based on keywords from your responses to the survey,” Cloud was saying, and Angeal focused on him.  “Everyone gets ten dates, eight minutes each.  There’s thirty-six people here, so the matchings aren’t perfect, but hopefully you’ll be with the ten people most like you.”  

“I see.”  

Cloud pushed some of his bangs out of his face and gave Angeal an easy smile.  He clapped him on the bicep, and squeezed gently before dropping his arm.  “Don’t worry, seriously. It’s not supposed to be a stressful thing.  You’re cute, you’ll get lots of matches.”

Angeal blushed the whole way back to the bar, where he ordered a second drink and nursed it quietly until the bar filled up with individuals who—he noted happily—sometimes looked as nervous as he felt.  Drinks were ordered, and a few minutes before eight Cloud climbed on top of a chair. The bar fell quiet.

“Hey everybody!” He seemed suddenly so full of energy, unlike the quiet young man Angeal had been talking to earlier.  He knew that privately Cloud did this for the money, or had at first, but it seemed he sort of enjoyed it, or at least had gotten to the point where he could push through it and seem like he did.  He seemed a little uncomfortable with everyone’s eyes on him, but Angeal had always been particularly good at reading that kind of thing in people after growing up with Sephiroth.  

Everyone sat at chairs without order; it seemed they would relocate to specific places later, but after their debriefing.  

“Welcome to  _Seventh Heaven,_ ” Cloud greeted.  He got some hollers from regulars and polite applause from everybody else.  

The point of speed dating was to meet a bunch of people in a small amount of time in a fun setting, and without the stress more traditional dating could bring.  Eight minute dates were long enough to begin to know the person but not long enough to get into anything deep.  This was about impressions and the big stuff, not minute details that would distract from the main objective—which was ultimately  _can I have a good time with this person_?  

There were rules. No asking about what someone did for a living, or how much money they made.  No being an asshole was another; Cloud threateningly said that he wouldn’t have a problem throwing anyone out the door if they tried to start something.   Everyone in attendance was nonmonosexual—whether bi or pan or otherwise, if you would have a problem with the gender (or lack of) of any person who sat in front of you then you weren’t welcome.  _Seventh Heaven_ and other bars in Midgar offered speed dating nights that were strictly for heterosexuals or gay people, but this wasn’t it.  

Everyone got their info sheets, the one Cloud had showed Angeal earlier.  There was an indicator before each date as to where to sit; sometimes these worked like musical chairs, or an ‘inside group’ would stay seated while those on the outside would cycle around.  Because they had been specifically matched to ten others there would be a bit more movement involved, but the chairs were clearly marked so everyone would know where to go.  There was a small bit of space for notes about each date, if you wanted to take them, and a space where you could indicate if you wanted to see that person again or not.  If you said yes, and the other person said yes, Cloud would put you into contact; after logging in to the dating service website that  _Seventh Heaven_ subscribed to any matches’ contact info would be listed.

It wasn’t difficult, and still Angeal’s grip around his third drink was too-tight.  He wanted this to be over.  

Cloud hopped off the chair finally to more applause and blew a whistle.  He held up a timer.  “Everyone to the first chair indicated on your paper.  I’ll blow the whistle again when we’re ready to start.”  

Angeal hesitantly made his way to his first chair, dreading who his match would be.  He got there first and waited, trying to look relaxed but not  _too_ relaxed, like he didn’t care. His hair was still in the ponytail, he realized with a shock, but couldn’t take it out now.

A perfectly normal looking woman sat in front of him, and they shook hands.  “Nice to meet you,” Angeal said, smiling genuinely, and hoping that his smile could sooth  _him_ for a change, and not the recipient.

“Hi!” she said, loud and clearly anxious herself.  “I’m so nervous,  _aaah_!”

“Me too,” Angeal said, nodding rapidly.  “That’s a relief to hear.”

When everyone was seated Cloud blew the whistle, starting the timer.

Angeal squinted at her nametag and wrote her ID number on the first space on his sheet, and then her name to help him remember.  “…Angela?” he asked incredulously.

“Angeal?”  

They shared a loud laugh over the similarity in their names.  “That’s too funny,” she said, wringing her hands over the table.

More rapid nodding. “Yeah.  You, ah, you look great.  It’s nice to meet you.”  

“Thanks!  You too!”

Their conversation consisted of more loud half-yells and overenthusiastic reactions to everything the person said.  Nothing really got discussed at all, and they spent a few minutes commenting on the interior decorations at  _Seventh Heaven_.  Angeal shared a story about his carpenter days, when he’d installed a wall trim just like the one they had here.  It occurred to him only afterward that that story was boring as shit.  

He didn’t check  _yes_ to see her again, but figured that was okay.  The first date had to be the most uncomfortable of them all, right?  All around them during those eight minutes was lots of other awkward laughter.  The group had to get the jitters out.  

For the second date Angeal moved to one of the tables by the end of the table.  This man’s name was Ian, ID number 4428.  Cute, but not his type.  Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to hear him out.  “Hey,” he greeted, smiling and leaning back in his chair, alcohol making him more confident this time around.

“Hi,” Ian said briskly. He leant forward.  “Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush.  Do you have a big dick?”  

Angeal gaped, utterly flabbergasted.

Ian tapped his finger against the tabletop between every word.  “I know what I want.  If I’m dating a man, dick size is a dealbreaker.  I’ve had too many shitty relationships to settle for anything less than what’s best for me.  I deserve better than that.”  

He raised his eyebrows, waiting, and Angeal said, “’Big’ seems subjective.  I don’t know what you’ve seen before.”

“So you don’t.” Ian sighed, and made a note on his paper.  “Moving on, do you—”

“I didn’t say I didn’t.”

“Now you’re just saying that because I implied you didn’t.  Your precious masculinity.  Do you have a criminal record?”

Angeal very easily could have stood up and demonstrated his girth due to Genesis’ ridiculous jeans but figured it would be lost on this guy— _definitely_ not his type, though he could appreciate deep down how Ian wasn’t letting himself settle.  He probably could have done a bit more of that.

“No,” he said, and because he was being contrary at this point, added, “Why the bias against those with criminal records?  We all know the justice system is problematic.”

“…True.  I suppose my true love could have been wrongfully convicted.”

“Happens all the time. You’d be missing out.”

He felt strangely victorious when, at the end of the date, he’d successfully argued—and perhaps changed Ian’s point of view—on several political issues, and on the merits of his favorite TV show,  _The Keepers._ Absolutely nothing on the romance front, however.  

Date three was entirely textbook, until it got weird.  There were links on the website where he’d joined to things like ‘What Questions To Ask During a Speed Date?’ and after twenty seconds of awkward silence in the beginning after meeting Daniel he ran through them all in his head.  _What color best describes your personality? What are you most passionate about? What’s the most reckless thing you’ve ever done? What makes you laugh? If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? If you won the lottery how would you spend it?_

He asked a few of the more boring ones, getting equally as boring ones back, until he asked, “If you could invite anyone, dead or alive, out for drinks, who would it be?”

“Barnaby Hojo,” Daniel said, with a wicked glint in his eyes.

“That fucked up scientist?  …He was executed, wasn’t he?  When they found that bunker of test subjects.”

Daniel swirled a finger around in the condensation on his glass.  “Whaaat… you’re trying to tell me you never thought about some-” he glanced up through his eyelashes, “secret genetic experiments?”

Angeal was unsure if that was a pick-up line or if he was just twisted, but he got a  _no_ either way.

Date four was surprisingly pleasant.  She was very pretty, also had a thing for flowers, although his own knowledge very easily eclipsed hers and he tried to take it easy so he wouldn’t appear intimidating.  They talked about dogs, and they traded pictures of their own pups, cooing the whole time.   _Yes_.

Date five was awkward, and he spent half the time talking to the guy next to him, because their dates were two girls, best friends, who had come together.  They kept leaning in to each other’s ears and whispering feedback about the other’s date.  It was frustrating and confusing; Angeal got along much better with the man anyway, and wrote his ID number down with a  _Yes_ instead of his actual date’s.  

After that was the halfway point, and they had a twenty minute break to get another drink and mingle. Angeal stood, stretching his shoulders. He grabbed a drink from a bartender—a girl with short black hair had come at some point, and beamed at him as she passed it over—and surveyed the group of chatting individuals.

All things considered it wasn’t quite as bad as he had hoped.  Kind of entertaining, in a weird way.  He debated going over to talk to the girl he’d had such a good conversation with earlier, but he spotted bright blond spikes in the corner of the room and gravitated there instead.  

Angeal asked when he got close, “You having fun?”

Cloud was mopping up someone’s spilled drink, and snorted, “Loads.”  When he realized Angeal was not just passing by, and intended to wait for him to finish, he asked, “Are you?”

“Yeah,” Angeal said, surprised he meant it.  “It’s been kind of…weird, but good.”

“The weird ones make the best stories, at least.  You’re not too nervous anymore?”

“No,” Angeal said, waving a hand, perhaps more animatedly than he would have had he been sober.  He leant against the wall and reached up to pull out his ponytail finally.  “I don’t know how in the hell I got matched with a couple of my dates, but hey.”  He shrugged good-naturedly.  “I can roll with it.  Is there a big kink in my hair?”

He turned around, hoping the hair tie hadn’t left his hair with a crease.

“Uh…”  He felt Cloud’s hand in it, shifting some around to hit the light better.  “Yeah, I think so.”  

“Damn.  Better just leave it then.”  He put it back up, caught Cloud watching, and asked, “Does it look okay?”

“Oh. Definitely.”  Cloud nodded.  “Not a lot of guys can pull that look off.  It’s sexy.”

“Th—er, thank you,” Angeal stuttered, all of his smoothness he’d collected as the dates went on gone in an instant.  

“I don’t have to worry about that.  It won’t really stay in a ponytail anymore.  Had one as a kid, but it was a lot longer back then.”

“It’s great,” Angeal marveled.  “I have a friend whose is sort of similar.  The ‘how much hair gel do you use’ question understandably frustrates him. No one believes it’s natural.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Cloud groaned, “I get that all the time.”  

Cloud shared that he rode a motorcycle, and that the helmet occasionally gave him helmet-head, which always resulted in a lot of laughs.  He showed him a picture of the bike, Fenrir, on his phone—Angeal was amazed.

“Built him myself,” Cloud said proudly, slightly jutting out his chest.  He was a dork, but a precious one.

The twenty minute break ended far too quickly, and Cloud left to stand on his chair and gather attention again.  Before he left he crowded in close, tapped Angeal’s jaw with his knuckle and murmured, “You got this, tiger,” before slipping away.  

Date six.  “What would be the title of your biography?”

“ _Sarah Price: The Captain of Team Fuck-Up_.  It has a ring to it, I think.”

“I like you.”

Date seven.  Angeal held his date’s hand tenderly across the table, both of his larger ones wrapped around theirs.  “Your dad would be so proud of you,” he said quietly, leaning forward, big, doleful eyes fixed on their face.

Payton was openly crying. “It just—it just means so much t-to hear that from a stranger, you know?  You don’t even  _know me_  and you know he’d forgive me for that.”

“I don’t need to know you to know you’re a good person.  It sounds like he really knew how much you loved him, at the end.”  Angeal blinked rapidly, his own eyes wet.

He came around the table and hugged them before moving on to the next table.

Date eight. “And then I told him, there’s no way in hell I’m lowering myself and doing something like that because you told me to!”

“Right. Absolutely.  That’s how it should be.”

“But then he leaves me for the guy from the laundry room  _that week_.  What the fuck?”

“Ugh.  What the fuck is right.”

“Yeah.  And then I called his sister, right?  And I told her that I had dirt on her brother, and she was interested, because last spring he sold her son some crystal Mako…”

Date nine.  “ _Even if the morrow is barren of promises…”_

“… _nothing can forestall my return,”_ Angeal finished. He and his date stared at each other with very wide eyes for a long time.

Date ten.  “I really enjoyed talking to you, Angeal.”

“Me too.”  

“The tenth date is over already, wow.  Tonight went quick.”

“Faster than I expected. I was nervous, but… these were fun.”

“Yeah.  Were you matched with that guy over there, with the ghost wife?”  

“No,  _what_?”

His last date ended with a lot of laughs, a gentle goodbye, and one last _Yes_ for his paper.   Cloud collected all of the papers, told them to expect their match emails in the next few days, and thanked everyone for coming out. Everyone clapped for him.  Cloud hopped down off his chair with one last reminder for everyone to get a drink from the bar—“hosting this shit is expensive,” he complained—and everyone scattered.

There were still fifteen minutes before Zack was due to drive by and pick him up, and for whatever reason Angeal felt done with meeting new people for the night.  He drifted, perhaps unsurprisingly, to Cloud, his steady rock in the uncertainty of the evening, who was collecting empty drinks off the now-vacated tables.    


“You want any help?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Cloud said, handing him some glasses.  “What do you think now that it’s all over?”

Angeal considered as they brought the glasses to Tifa, and then returned for the rest.  “It was good,” he decided, “Worth coming out to. I only had four  _Yes’s_ at the end of the night but I still enjoyed myself.” He frowned, and accepted another damp rag.  “Though I’m not sure how much the speed dating thing is for me, honestly.”  

“Why not?  It’s fine if it isn’t—I’m just curious.” Cloud abandoned the table-cleaning for a moment and turned to Angeal, one hand on his hip.  The other grabbed at a tense muscle in his neck after the long day.  

“I get that just the few minutes’ introduction is supposed to be the point,” he said delicately, “and it’s supposed to leave you wanting more.  But I just don’t know if eight minutes was enough to… pique my interest enough to really  _need_ a second date.”  

He folded his arms, confused.  Cloud looked thoughtful for a moment and Angeal sent him a questioning look.  

“Well,” the bartender began, his brilliant blue eyes rising to lock with Angeal’s, “For how many minutes have we talked today?”

“Huh?”

“I’d say thirty or so before the event started…”

“Fifteen during the break.  Ten or so now.”  

“Is fifty-five minutes long enough to figure out if you’d want a proper date or not?”  

It took a few moments of startled silence for Angeal to wrestle his cool under control.  “Consider my interest piqued.  I  _need_ that date.”

Cloud laughed, and he seemed so much younger when he didn’t look so serious.  “Cool.  I don’t have an ID number, but I have access to your email.  I’ll send you something in a day or two when I send you your matches.” He looked bashful.  “I may have peeked at some already.  Looks like you got a lot of  _yes’s_.”  

“There’s only one  _yes_ I’m concerned with, and I got it already.” Angeal promised to give himself a pat on the back for that particular line later once he was out of here.  

“Yeah, whatever,” Cloud muttered, but the tiny freckles dusting the bridge of his nose were standing out more brilliantly due to his gentle flush.  “Gimme that rag.”

He passed it over amicably and assisted Cloud for a few more minutes until he got a text:  _We’re outside._

With a promise that he would see Cloud soon Angeal all but strutted out to Zack’s car.  He got into the backseat and buckled himself in beside Sephiroth.  “So how was it?” Genesis prompted.  “You meet the love of your life in ten minutes or less?”

“I wouldn’t know that yet.  I didn’t have much luck with the speed dates _but_ -” he raised a finger, “I have a date with the organizer.”

“Al _right_ , Ang!”

Angeal basked in their encouragement, and then asked, “How was the play?”

Zack twisted around in his seat for just a moment to send him a miserable look, and he laughed.  In some strange twist of fate it looked like, somehow, he’d had the best evening out of all of them.


End file.
